I don't have internet presently on the laptop through the USB wireless adapter. The installation does not seem to be the problem, since the hardware Belkin N300 does work.
I can NOT access the internet via anything but wireless. I am presently using Windows looking for answers while trying to use this little device. So any advice will have to take that into account.

The different wireless connections are correctly detected. However, if I try to connect to my Internet provider, Ubuntu tries and keeps failing:

Wireless network

Disconnected. You are now offline.

That is all it says. There is only one thing following after that: the computer tries to reconnect to the network. What does this stuff mean?

My laptop with Ubuntu 12.10 does automatically recognize the hardware, so it is not a driver problem. I know the equipment is not bad, I just don't know how to make it communicate with my provider.

So I suspect "it managed to establish a connection, but was unable to finalize the connection for some reason and so was disconnected." There is no passphrase or login before browsing the web with Firefox. With Windows, I have to open the browser and give my login and password to the provider through a webpage, but the connection has to be established first.

Any tips, tricks?

In /lib/firmware/, there is a folder called RTL8192E. However, according to Windows, the driver is called rtl8192cu.